Kyle's Career Filmstrip: TV Series and Movies

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Jun 14, 2012

Emmy: Year Nice Guys Might Finish First

Road to Emmy 2012

Kyle Chandler rode off into the proverbial sunset last year winning the
lead actor drama Emmy for the final season of "Friday Night Lights." It
was an impressive victory, given the show's long-running struggle to
find viewers beyond its small legion of admiring fans and TV critics.

All
the more striking: Chandler, playing the show's noble high school
football coach, beat a slate of actors portraying the sort of unsavory
types that Emmy voters typically favor.

And
that's not even including Bryan Cranston, a three-time winner for his
intense turn as the high school teacher turned meth kingpin on "Breaking
Bad," since that show took the year off.
"Score one for the good
guys, right?" says Jason Katims, head writer and exec producer on
"Friday Night Lights" and creator of NBC's "Parenthood."

"I think,
on a whole, most people are just trying to be good and trying to make
their lives work," he says. "The inherent conflicts and struggles in
life come from the things that get in the way of that pursuit. To me as a
writer, that's what's interesting."

That's clearly the case,
since Katims has another strong, good-guy contender this year in the
lead drama category, "Parenthood's" Peter Krause.

Krause's
dedicated dad joins a few other father-of-the-year candidates -- Noah
Wyle from "Falling Skies," "Downton Abbey's" Hugh Bonneville and Kiefer
Sutherland from "Touch" -- as well as the Timothy Olyphant's U.S.
marshal on "Justified." (Olyphant won his first nomination for lead
drama last year.)

Decent men have captured Emmy voters' attention
in the past. James Spader's Alan Shore, first seen on "The Practice"
and, later, on "Boston Legal," might have bent the rules occasionally
(OK, frequently) in his pursuit of justice, but he was always fighting
for the "right" side. Andre Braugher's "Homicide: Life on the Street"
detective dedicated himself to battling crime, while Tom Skeritt's
sheriff operated on a small-town level on "Picket Fences."

The
challenge with such characters, says "Falling Skies" show runner Remi
Aubuchon, is moving beyond the qualities typically associated with
white-hat heroes to create well-rounded characters learning from their
mistakes. He points to Wyle's "Falling Skies" protagonist, a weary man
who has his hands full leading the resistance against an alien invasion
while trying to keep his three sons out of harm's way.

"Noah
didn't want to play a good guy who does everything right," Aubuchon
says, "but a man who doesn't always get it right, someone whose
strengths can turn into weaknesses if he's not careful. Someone like
that, to me, can have just as many colors as a tragic figure like Walter
White on 'Breaking Bad.' "

Chandler transitioned from "Friday
Night Lights" to J.J. Abrams' bigscreen sci-fi thriller "Super 8"
playing a variation of Wyle's "Falling Skies" character. For him, much
of the pleasure in portraying these moral men can be boiled down to
finding the characters' flaws. And these imperfections don't always have
to be taken seriously.

"Some of my favorite scenes in 'Friday
Night Lights' were the ones with Coach Taylor at home," Chandler says.
"Coach could be a real idiot at times. … I think his wife would be the
first one to tell you that. And yet, he'd usually fight her to the end,
though, to his credit, I think he always apologized. Those were nice
moments, too. The dichotomy between Coach's work life and home life
always kept things interesting for me."

Katims says that kind of
contrast can be as dramatic and interesting as, say, a Jersey mobster
trying to keep both his crew and family under control. Maybe more so, he
says, because, if done honestly, viewers will find the situations more
relatable.

Krause, on "Parenthood," deals with raising an autistic
son, unexpectedly becoming a father late in life and finding himself
unemployed.

"Every family I know has something going on behind
closed doors," Katims says. "None of us ever imagine these
complications, yet we deal with them. That's the stuff of drama."